He grunted and reached for a drawer in the cabinet, pulling out a bottle of red wine and handing it to me.
I uncorked it and found two dirty mugs under the bed, which, after some thought, I poured the wine into.
"Drink this," I said. "I need you calm." I waited as he gulped down the red liquid. "You look like shit."
Some of Manning’s old fire came back to him when he answered.
"Fuck you."
"Ah." I lit a cigarette and offered it to him, lighting another for myself. I hoped the smell of smoke would help mask the mouldy, decaying atmosphere of the cellar, but in the event I can’t say the effort was overly successful.
"Now," I said. "Tell me the truth. Tell me about the loa."
I looked at him and waited. His face changed, anger receding as a
kind of dead man’s hope crept into his eyes. Yet the overwhelming emotion on his face was fear.
"Tell me about the loa."
I did not want to use the word of my people, mal’ach. Angel. To do so would be to perpetuate a Christianised image of the word: of saintly, holy beings, granting peace and tranquillity and the touch of God. Those angels stared down at people from Church windows and from the pages of thousands of religious tracts, and I had no doubt it would have been a better, more just world if it were true.
"How much do you know?"
My patience was gone. It was not my job to play nursemaid to a man who had put me in danger, and it had been a long, long day besides. My fist hit his face and sent him reeling back, the cigarette dropping from his lips onto the floor. I grabbed him by the throat, lifting him up in the air and pinning him against the wall.
I watched as his feet tried to find purchase and failed.
"Don’t fuck me about," I said. Each word was like a jagged knife I wanted to run across his neck. "You fucked up, Eddie. You fucked up big time. Now tell me what I need to know or you are going to find your skeleton in this cellar for the next hundred years with nothing but Billie Carleton’s ghost for company. Do you understand?"
He was turning blue, but still he tried to nod.
"Good."
I opened my fingers, let him drop onto the bed, where he lay holding his throat and coughing. He tried to reach for the wine, but I knocked it out of his hand. The wine spilled like a pool of blood on the decaying mattress.
"Talk."
His words when they came were barely more than a whisper. "Prison was hard. They treated us like dogs. Worse, because the English value their dogs. They treated us like cattle, like we were nothing more than animals destined for the meat grinder. The wardens beat us, and at night the screams of the weaker prisoners could be heard echoing throughout the prison. We didn’t treat each other any better."
He coughed and this time I poured him some wine. He drank it quickly and continued. "There was one prisoner nobody else dared treat this way. Not the wardens, not the prisoners. His name was Beauregard. Saturday Beauregard." Manning drew a shape in the air with his hands. "He was a big, mean badman. A bull bucka." He saw my expression. "Someone who butts heads with a bull, Tzaddik. A bully, and that’s exactly what Saturday Beauregard was. That, and a houngan, a horse for Baron Samedi. I saw him when he was possessed, and you knew then that the only thing keeping him in prison was that he liked it. He liked it! He enjoyed ruling the prisoners and the wardens. He had a good life, like a king. And he liked breaking the weaker men most of all. The loudest screams always came from his cell." Manning shivered when he spoke, and his eyes looked haunted by memories. I offered him a cigarette, and he took it.
"Anyway, I got on with him all right. There were few enough black men in that prison, and Saturday was our boss. He had strange powers, but he was still a man. He liked talking, and he liked to hear stories, too. Also, he was a heroin addict. I think that was one reason he didn’t escape. He needed a regular supply, and once he had the drug he didn’t care much for anything. I still had my contacts, of course – I was only sent down for eighteen months – and so I ended up being his main supplier."
I listened. A strange feeling was forming again at the back of my head as if we were being watched. I got up and checked the stairs, but we were alone. I sat back down and let Manning continue.
"One night I slept badly. I dreamed, and in the dream I saw Billie, not dead but alive, walking toward me across a stormy sea. She seemed to walk on the waves, her hands reaching out to me, but when she finally came close enough to touch, her hands were as cold as marble and her hug was ice. I woke up then, and couldn’t return to sleep. In the morning, Saturday picked up on it, and I was forced to tell him about the dream, and about Billie."
The feeling in the back of my head intensified. I stood up but again there was nothing. The cellar was silent save for Manning’s voice.
"He knew who she was, and he enjoyed my discomfort. I think that’s when he had his idea, though he only approached me several weeks later. When he found me he was shaking. He needed more heroin, and he had a proposition for me." There was something in Manning’s face that made me think of an old clock, badly broken. I gave him another cigarette, and he continued.
"He said he could bring her back from the dead. That he had the power to negotiate with the Baron. In exchange, I would supply him with all the heroin I could get hold of, for free. I thought he was mad.
"You might not know what it’s like when you’re incarcerated, though I suspect that you do. For me, trapped in that prison, racked with dreams and held captive by a constant, dull fear, the thought was soon too much to bear. All I could think of was Billie, Billie’s warmth against mine, Billie’s laugh that was like a spring garden, Billie’s humour, Billie’s touch...
"After a week of that, I went back to Saturday, and I said yes."
I didn’t hear any more. When the last word left his lips a cold, damp wind blew through the basement and the candles were extinguished. I heard the door at the top of the stairs move on its hinges as if caught in a storm, beating out a rhythm as it banged against the frame.
Without conscious thought I pushed Manning down, reached for his discarded gun, and in one move turned around and shot the figure standing at the bottom of the stairs.
He fell with a grunt of pain.
Human, then, and not the dark shape with the burning green eyes that I had half expected to be there.
More shapes moving on the stairs.
The gun rang out, once, twice, and two of them fell, but more kept coming in.
"Is there any way out of here?" I shouted to Manning.
One of the intruders reached the bottom and attacked. I felt a knife cut through my clothes and penetrate my skin. I twisted, broke the man’s wrist, and plunged the knife into his eye.
More, jumping down from the staircase. There was a tattoo on the man’s wrist, the one I had just killed.
A sword was thrust at my head. I ducked, kicked out at the attacker’s face, and at his knees. He dropped with a scream, and I wrenched the sword out of his hand, using it to inflict wounds on two more of the attackers as they jumped down.
Then I was choking. Fingers were wrapped around my throat from behind, thumbs pressing into my windpipe. My elbow connected with the attacker’s chest but didn’t remove the pressure. I struggled, then found the pressure had lifted, and I could breathe again. Turning around, I saw my attacker on the floor, a bloodied gash in his head.
Above him stood Manning, and he was grinning.
"There’s a way out through the sewers," he said. "If you could hold them for just a minute..."
He pulled the bed away from the wall. I turned back and into the whirling blade of another of the assassins. I broke his nose and watched him collapse. It was becoming difficult to move with all the bodies around, and more and more of the silent assassins were coming in through the door.
"Come on!"
Manning removed the bed; below it was a rug and a wooden box, which he opened. He pushed the rug with his foot, revealing a trapdoor. I ran towards him in a
crouch.
"Get down there, I’ll follow you," he said. There was a stick of dynamite in his one hand, a lighter in the other. He must have had them hidden in the box.
Edgar Manning, Always Prepared.
I jumped down the hole.
An explosion of heat above me and Manning dropped like a lead balloon, knocking into me. I fell into rancid water; a rat scuttled by, startled by the commotion.
It was a big rat.
"Who the fuck were those people?" Manning said as he got up. He looked dazed, but the grin on his face showed that, all of a sudden, he was enjoying himself.
I told him about the tattoo I’d seen. Manning let out a whistle. We were moving as fast we could through the sewers: the smell of excrement and waste was overpowering, and dirty water kept dripping on our heads and clothes from the metal ceiling of the pipe we were in. "Tongs? I didn’t expect that."
"I did," I said. "I think someone wants you dead."
Manning turned his head: a man appeared behind us, and Manning shot him clean through the head.
"Or you," he said. "Which is the answer I find more likely."
I had thought of that, and the thought gave me no pleasure. Manning, on the other hand, seemed buoyant.
He led me through the glistening tunnels; there were no more followers. Our passage made the pipes reverberate and produce odd echoing sounds, and our feet splashed in the waste water.
"You don’t want to be caught down here when they flood the sewers," Manning said, and moved his index finger along his neck with emphasis.
"I don’t want to be caught down here at all," I said.
I followed him, but a feeling of foreboding began to steal over me. I was used to feeling the connection with the ground, with the skies, and now I felt that connection disappearing, barred to me behind the lead piping and the layers of earth. Down here elementals ruled, in a simpler and more dangerous world, a world closer to the Old World, a buffer zone between this world of Assiah and the outer Sephirot.
"Chang told me you dug up Billie Carleton’s coffin."
He stopped and pushed me against the wall of the tunnel, his breath hot against mine. I didn’t fight him. His face was hard, like iron that was smelt and remade in the furnace. "Then he lied."
"Did he?" I said. "It seems to me you both have an unhealthy interest in the dead."
He lifted his hand to hit me. I shook my head. After a moment he lowered his hand and continued walking.
"I could say the same for you," he said over his shoulder.
I trudged after him without an answer.
We were walking, it seemed to me, for too long. We had descended in Soho; surely there would be a manhole cover somewhere nearby? Instead, I felt our path was leading us further down, into the bowels of the city, and I was growing disturbed. I looked at Manning’s back: he seemed to walk with a purpose in his step, leading me... leading me where?
"Stop," I said. The tunnels were getting darker and darker, and it was difficult to see. The air turned humid and hot, and deformed rodents ran in the murky water at our feet. "I said stop."
He didn’t seem to hear me.
"Manning!"
I watched him disappear into the shadows ahead.
I looked at my surroundings, sighed, and moved on to follow him. From a coat pocket I removed a small packet of snow and snorted it. I thought of Manning: he’d seemed scared when he came to see me, and scared again in the basement, and yet the fighting seemed to have revived him. And now he was leading me through the sewers like a Dybbuk, a man possessed. I thought of simply knocking him out, but then where would I go? I didn’t want to leave him down here, and I had no idea how to get out. I was, literally, out of my depth.
Somehow, the thought made me giggle. I felt happier now, as if decisions and their making were no longer important. I followed behind Manning as we walked further and further into the bowels of the earth.
We walked in silence, the only noise produced by the treading of our feet in water.
I followed Manning through turnings in the sewer system, into tunnels that were made of stone; clumps of moss grouped together for comfort on the cold walls providing a faint luminosity. There were writings on the walls, letters and drawings that I felt I should recognise and yet didn’t.
The quality of light changed: as we journeyed I began to notice strange crystal globes set in the walls, emitting a clear, bright light.
After more time had passed, the tunnel we were in began to widen and at last came to an end in a cavern of white stone. Here the light was brilliant and yet comfortable. Crystal globes were set at regular intervals along the walls, turning the cavern into the semblance of a ballroom, or a temple.
On the floor of the cavern was a giant drawing, and when I saw it my mind returned to me. It was the Tree of Life.
A dark snake was coiled around the Sephirot. Its tail was touching Malchut and its head was by Keter.
Beside me, Manning’s face slackened, then closed. Without a sound the big man fell to his knees and then to the floor, where he lay with a look of peace on his face.
As he’d fallen, the lights had dimmed. I kneeled down and took his pulse. Manning’s heart was beating a strong, steady beat. He looked like a man in the throes of a deep, drugged sleep.
Nothing stirred amidst the newly formed shadows. I opened my mind and let it encompass the cavern. Slowly it expanded, and yet I encountered the presence of no living being, only a kind of ancient, drowsy solitude that seemed to emanate from the stones themselves.
"Tzaddik."
I turned, my mind shrinking back to one focal point from which I tried to see the speaker. The voice was feminine, and somewhat familiar, like the taste of vintage Judean wine sampled a long time ago and never entirely forgotten.
She stood in the drawing of the Tree, in the heart of the Pillar of Equilibrium, over the sphere called Tiphe’ret, Beauty. Her hair was short, where I remembered long; white, where I remembered the blackness of strong coffee.
"Amat..."
She laughed. I remembered her laughter, but it was buried deep, under the layers of memories that recorded every detail of her death, the screams as she fought the Leviathan in the old Egyptian kingdom and was pinned by the dying god into the mud of the Nile, her body broken and the magic whispering as it ebbed away... Amat al-Qadir, Servant of the Almighty.
Under her feet the dark snake came alive. It crawled from the Tree of Life and wrapped itself around her like a scarf. Reptilian eyes regarded me; a forked tongue hissed as it tasted the air.
"It hardly seems credible that you are alive," I said.
She nodded. A small smile caught at the corners of her mouth like a butterfly threatening to escape. "Hardly," she said, and we both laughed.
"Come here, fallen guardian," she said. I walked to her. She held her hands to me, but when I touched her I felt nothing, only whispering air. I looked into her face, no longer smiling. "You died."
She inclined her head in agreement.
"The paths between the spheres are disturbed," Amat said. "The passage of those seeking an end to death has unbalanced the twenty-two ways."
I stood back and looked at her, feeling both sad and annoyed. "Don’t you think I know that?"
She shook her head. "It isn’t a question of what you know, it is a question of what you do."
"Amat," I said. "You can drop the sphinx act. I’m too old for riddles, and I am no longer bound by the code of the Thirty-Six."
She smiled at that, and it brought back memories of her and Ma’ani and Sarwa -- the three golden girls of the hidden temple -- in days long gone, when the sun seemed never to set and the waning and waxing of the moon were reflected in the Nile and in the lives of our people. Still, I felt the old bitterness rise in me again.
"You were always a rake," she said gently, and I felt the anger pass as swiftly as it had materialised.
"I’ve come to deliver a message," she said. Her hands stroked the snake, and its tongue hi
ssed against her skin, scenting her. "There is a thing let free on Assiah which is not meant to be so." She looked into my eyes and said, "And it is your problem."
"Strictly speaking," I said, "it’s the Thirty-Six’s problem."
Her eyes betrayed amusement. "Oh, they will probably move in if you can’t solve it," she said. "But of course, you’d be dead by then."
"And wouldn’t that be just dandy," I said. But I thought about her words, realised they had hidden a warning. There was something on Assiah that could kill a Tzaddik. No wonder the Thirty-Six were sitting it out, hoping I could do the job for them or, even better, finally die in the process. I thought about my old comrades and decided I’d rather stick around, if only to give them a two-fingered salute.
"Is that it?" I said, feigning a confidence I didn’t quite feel.
That smile again, returning with its parasitic host of unwanted memories.
"That’s it," she said. "No more 'sphinx act', all right? You know the consequences of failure or success."
"Fine," I said. I had always found it difficult to argue with Amat. I reached out with my hand, wanting to touch her one last time, to feel her hair between my fingers, to say good-bye. But again there was nothing there, like a mirage painted on air.
I looked around me, at the cavern and the painting on the floor. "What is this place?" I said.
"A hiding place," Amat said. "During the riots and blood libels of Richard the First’s rule, a group of rabbis -- with an understanding some say has never been surpassed since -- built this place as a refuge for our people, deep under the king’s city."
"It couldn’t have done them much good," I said, thinking of the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. I had never heard of a secret dwelling underneath London, or of the mysterious rabbis Amat talked about.
"Their understanding of the Zohar was unparalleled," Amat continued. "They utilised..."
I let her speak as I opened my mind again to my surroundings. In life, Amat loved to show off her knowledge, and it seemed she had retained the tendency in death. Still, I could not detect her presence. My mind moved over the curious crystals and their cold light, sensing nothing. Beyond one of the walls I felt space, and within it giant, hushed figures. My mind moved over them, sensing enormous bodies made of clay: statues, perhaps? My mind moved around them, then shrank back as I detected a slow, regular beat coming from them. Were they alive?
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